| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: side; one of the doors being open, so that the rays
stretched far in over the threshing-floor to the
preacher and his audience, all snugly sheltered from
the northern breeze. The listeners were entirely
villagers, among them being the man whom she had seen
carrying the red paint-pot on a former memorable
occasion. But her attention was given to the central
figure, who stood upon some sacks of corn, facing the
people and the door. The three o'clock sun shone full
upon him, and the strange enervating conviction that
her seducer confronted her, which had been gaining
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: resistance is paralyzed by the agency of Superstition, that the
race can be subjected to systems of exploitation for hundreds and
even thousands of years. The ancient empires were all priestly
empires; the kings ruled because they obeyed the will of the
priests, taught to them from childhood as the word of the gods.
Thus, for instance, Prescott tells us:
Terror, not love, was the spring of education with the Aztecs....
Such was the crafty policy of the priests, who, by reserving to
themselves the business of instruction, were enabled to mould the
young and plastic mind according to their own wills, and to train
it early to implicit reverence for religion and its ministers.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: many young girls--that no one else dwelt in a sphere so lofty as to be
able to understand the merits of her soul; and a pride based no less
on her birth than on her beauty. In the absence of the overwhelming
sentiment which, sooner or later, works havoc in a woman's heart, she
spent her young ardor in an immoderate love of distinctions, and
expressed the deepest contempt for persons of inferior birth.
Supremely impertinent to all newly-created nobility, she made every
effort to get her parents recognized as equals by the most illustrious
families of the Saint-Germain quarter.
These sentiments had not escaped the observing eye of Monsieur de
Fontaine, who more than once, when his two elder girls were married,
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